YouTube is part of the Google family but the desktop experience has never been updated to the material design philosophy that was launched with the release of Android Lollipop.
Well that has changed thanks to an announcement by YouTube where you can get a sneak peak at the redesign of the YouTube experience on desktop.
“Starting today, we’re opening up a preview of the new design to a small group of people from around the world so we can get feedback,” YouTube said on the blogpost. They have given YouTube on Web the material design treatment so that it is clean, consistent with other Google services and looks great.
Apparently the new design is built on a new and faster framework named Polymer which will allow them to have quicker feature development from now on. Polymer also allowed YouTube to introduce a Dark Theme which I got to try out thanks to a hack that was all over Reddit and on Twitter. This dark theme would be perfect for those instances in low light where the dazzling white background may be too much for the eyes and you still want to watch YouTube videos in the dark.
Since it is a test, you can opt in to preview the new design at youtube.com/new. However, if you want to revert to the old design, you will be able to do that by clicking “Restore classic YouTube” from the Account Menu.
Finally YouTube is getting an overdue design makeover and I don’t think you’ll be reverting any time soon.
